Rockin' 'round the rink

Boitano, Chicago team for skating show at Notre Dame

A lot goes into finding a venue for a figure skating show, Brian Boitano says about selecting the location for his Dec. 18 special on NBC.

"It's matching up a location where they want to have you and you want to be," the Olympic gold medalist and host of "The Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular" says while touring the University of Notre Dame in preparation for the show's Nov. 20 filming at the new Compton Family Ice Arena.

"It had to do with Chicago," he says, referring to the classic rock band that also provided the live music for the show in 2009. "We've never had a repeat artist and we liked working with them ... and they said they were coming out with a new Christmas album."

Because the band has a lot of Notre Dame connections -- Peter Schivarelli, Chicago's manager, played football at Notre Dame under Ara Parseghian -- the recently completed arena was chosen as a venue.

And the show will have a distinctly Irish feel, as Chicago teams up with the University of Notre Dame's Band of the Fighting Irish to perform both Chicago's hits and a sampling of songs from its new album, "O Christmas Three."

World and Olympic figure skaters who will perform include Ryan Bradley, the new U.S. national men's champion; Michael Weiss, a three-time national champion and two-time world bronze medalist; Yuka Sato, 1994 world champion; Elena Leonova and Andrei Khvalko, two-time world professional pairs team; Stephen Cousins, eight-time British national champion; Sinead and John Kerr, seven-time British national champions; and Kim Navarro and Brent Bommentre, 2008 U.S. national dance champions.

To add to the Irish flavor, Gev Manoukian, of "So You Think You Can Dance" season four, will act as the show's leprechaun.

"He's sort of the muse that runs through the show connecting everything," Boitano says. "Our costume designer is great. So she'll funky him up. He'll probably want to dress like a leprechaun every day."

A production of this magnitude takes a while to put together. Boitano says that the planning process for this show took nearly a year.

In 1995, he founded White Canvas Productions -- which creates figure skating shows both live and for television audiences -- because he wanted to have more control over show details.

"Basically, we are in charge of the whole show," he says. "We literally hire the costume designer, the lighting package, the music. We arrange everything -- where to build the stage, how to do the decking around the ice. ... I get to tell people what I want and then, hopefully, get it, if it's in the budget."

When it comes to choosing the cast, Boitano considers more than just skating ability.

"I choose them for not only being the greatest skaters, but for being people that I really work well with and who are hard workers," he says. "I love spending time with them and I love the collaborative effort that goes into all of us coming together for four days to try to do something really nice."

For the holiday show, he will skate to "I'll Be Home for Christmas" from Chicago's new album, which was released Oct. 4 and is No. 3 on the Billboard holiday album chart.

The band will also perform five songs from the new album and five of its hits, including "Hard Habit to Break," "25 or 6 to 4" and "Saturday in the Park."

Boitano says one of the reasons he wanted to work with the band again was that the effort they put in behind the scenes to make the show successful.

"That means editing music and making their songs shorter because skaters normally don't do six minutes on the ice -- they do three minutes," he says. "So they had to pare down their songs. They are really great at doing that, and that's important to us."

Lee Loughnane, a trumpeter and original member of Chicago, created MP3s of all the arrangements for the skaters. To edit the music, the band had to rehearse each song and figure out what could be cut from it without being too noticeable.

"The correct time frame (for each song) has to do with strength and how many moves the skaters can put through in that time," Loughnane says by telephone. "Their legs turn to Jell-O at the end of three minutes 15 seconds."

The skaters amaze him.

"You don't really see how difficult that stuff is. It looks easier when you are watching it on TV," he says. "They are really strong athletes, and when you see it live, you can't believe that they have done that right in front of your face."

It's like playing an instrument, he says.

"It takes more effort than it looks because you've done all the preparation in your head," Loughnane says. "But you have to work on stamina and specific moves and do all those things separately, so when you go out and play, it looks effortless."

For this show, the band has another element to work with as well, because it is playing with the Band of the Fighting Irish on at least four of the show's songs.

Chicago will arrive a few days before the show to rehearse with the marching band and plans to join the marching band Nov. 19 to play half-time for the Notre Dame-Boston College game.

In addition to Schivarelli's alumnus status, Chicago has other ties to the football program -- specifically charities two former coaches started.

A portion of each ticket at most of the band's shows is donated to the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, which seeks a cure to the fatal children's disease Niemann-Pick Type C. Another portion of each ticket goes to Hannah and Friends in South Bend, a charity started by former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis.

"It's nice to be able to give something back," Loughnane says. "But it's difficult to see that so many people still have to suffer."

The band also works with the American Cancer Society to raise funds for breast cancer research. It has an online bidding war for each of its concerts, and the highest bidder gets to sing "If You Leave Me Now" onstage with the band. The proceeds from this year's "Sing With Chicago" fundraiser are being donated to ACS in honor of Paqui Kelly, Coach Brian Kelly's wife, who battled breast cancer.

It was through this campaign that the band formed another connection to Notre Dame. In August, Isabela Nanni, a 15-year-old singer-songwriter from South Bend, opened for the band at one of its concerts.

"She had written a song for breast cancer and performed it at one of the events at Notre Dame," Loughnane says. "She got a lot of buzz on the Web."

Schivarelli, who heard Isabela perform on the Irish Green, brought the YouTube video of her song to the band's attention. He decided to bid for "Sing With Chicago" and give her the chance to sing onstage. The band also asked her to open for them at that concert.

"It was a blast," she says about her experience. "They are all so fun and the sweetest human beings you can meet, and beyond talented."

She likes their music because it is different from that of other bands and much more complicated to play.

"It improved my guitar-playing when I learned ('If You Leave Me Now')," she says with a laugh.

"I asked Lee, who's the trumpet player, 'Does it ever get a little bit tiring to play the same stuff over and over again every night?' " Isabela says. "He told me, 'I have to stay on top of my game, and we write really, really hard music. ... It's always challenging.' "

Isabela will join the band at the skating show, where she will sing Dolly Parton's part in "Wonderful Christmas Time," one of the songs from the band's new album.

"It's a really fun song. I've been singing it 10 times every day," she says.

So, how will it feel to sing while world-class skaters perform?

"It's going to be so cool," she says. Then laughs and adds, "I don't know how focused I am going to be."

On ice"The Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular," with the band Chicago takes place at 5 p.m. Nov. 20 at Compton Family Ice Arena on the University of Notre Dame campus. Tickets are $100-$20. For more information, call 574-631-7356 or visit the website und.com/tickets.